


Ignis Fatui

by rabidsamfan



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Great Hiatus, Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-12
Updated: 2011-09-12
Packaged: 2017-10-23 16:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/252316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidsamfan/pseuds/rabidsamfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>John Watson had learned the way of it when he was seven.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Ignis Fatui

John Watson had learned the way of it when he was seven. A familiar scent, a well-loved pattern, the sight of another boy being hugged by his mother. Reminders would come, and with them the memories, tugging at one's sleeve and turning one's head. If you practiced long and hard enough, you could turn the grief to something like happiness, to gratitude that you had not forgotten the touch of a hand, or the sound of lost laughter.

Once, halfway down a bottle, he had scrawled a list of names and tried to categorize the things which resurrected the shades who lingered forever at his heels. For most of them it was easy. Mary's perfume, the beat of marching men, the taste of curry, the ticking of his father's watch, the feel of the scarf his mother had knitted so many years ago -- cherished so long that he couldn't smell a mothball without thinking of her.

But when it came to Holmes, he was defeated. Holmes he saw at every corner of London, in the set of a sailor's shoulders, in the black of an old priest's cassock. Holmes who had worn a thousand guises and walked on every street. The loafer with the red hair, the scholar with his books, the beggar with his cup, the whiskered addict lolling in the gutter. All called to mind the gesticulations of pale hands, bright eyes in a noble face, the sound of a violin.

The other ghosts were boring by comparison.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted here: <http://rabidsamfan.livejournal.com/473130.html>


End file.
